


Angels from Down Below

by snowynight



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen, Horror, Lovecraftian, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-23 22:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8345506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowynight/pseuds/snowynight
Summary: Jim goes undercover to an elementary school, which has been turned into a monster's hunting ground. March on to your doom, in a secret war for humanity and beyond. (AU with Lovecraftian influence)





	

“You should eat more livers. They are good for your health,” Mrs Harvest said, putting another huge spoonful of chicken liver into Jim’s bowl. “Why, look at Ms Brown. She’s so thin and pale. I always worry that she will faint one day.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Harvest, “ Jim said, getting his bowl back before she could add more to already a mountain of food. He glanced at Ms Brown, the headroom teacher for Class 1A, her heavy makeup unable to hide how pale her lips were and how dark her eye circles were, and turned toward his lunch.

The chicken liver was very smooth, and matched very well with crisp onions. Jim gulped another heap of food, feeling the unfamiliar sensation of fullness in his stomach. He hadn’t heard more from Spock yet since he was sent here, but for a moment he almost didn’t mind. Undercover work rarely filled a stomach .

The teaches shared the same tables, their voice slow and tired. Several of them leaned by the wall or the table for support after walking for a short distance, their lips and nails pale. With the rate Mrs. Harvest fed them, either it was an unlikely coincidence, or something was harming them.

* * *

After lunch, Jim patrolled along the corridor. Suddenly a sweet syrupy smell hit him so hard that his mouth watered, and then the air became so damp that the moisture coated over his skin uncomfortably.

“Help!” a boy screamed. Jim rushed towards the source. Several students collapsed on the ground, their chests barely raising. A tall girl had her hand against a wall and was vomiting. Some students began to cry and scream. A boy with glasses panted, his eyes popped out, his hand pressing against his throat. “Red ribbon, red ribbon…” A girl sat on the floor murmuring to herself, paid no attention when another girl almost tripped over her. The teacher Mr. London held a chalk to his chest and was very still, his eyes begging Jim for help.

Jim dialed for an ambulance, and then shouted. “Children, line up and follow Mr. Brown to the underground. He helped the students up, telling the more able students to watch over the weaker one, counted their numbers, and gently nudge Mr. Brown, who whispered his thank and led the students out, . After making sure all students were accounted for, Jim informed the principal and waited for the medics.

After work, with some asking around, he found the medic at a card game. With several glasses of wine on Jim’s bill and subtle nudging, the medic replied, “It’s weird. I heard that there’s nothing wrong in the air or the food, But the teacher really needed to pile on iron. Look at him!” The medic shook his head when having another drink.

“You do a great job today, Jim. Your level-mindedness in the emergency helped prevent it from spreading to other students,” the principal said the next day, with several cough interrupting her words, her nails and lips pale.

“Just doing my job, Madam,” Jim said. It was time to do something.

* * *

That night Jim rent a room overnight. He locked the door, checked the wall, and pulled the curtain all down, before he took his red pill. He wasn’t sure how much his body would pay for that one day, but it was a small price to pay to be able to withstand hearing messages from Spock, who was from so beyond the known dimension that a direct phone line was unlikely.

The faded blue wallpaper in room now looked as good as new, and Jim could smell alcohol in his sweat. The room spiraled, fundamental theorem of calculus glittered with a reddish tint, while Euler's equation wailed in an azure high C pitch, mixed with a female voice singing a sorrowful slow song. Jim couldn’t help but smile despite his blooming headache. Only Spock would use Maths theorems for greeting.

Jim’s skin tickled, and he could feel Spock extending tendrils to touch him, Spock's usual way to inquire about him. While he could rip Jim into a hollow husk like Jim trampled an ant, he never forgot to knock. Jim answered with his memory, thoughts and inquiry.

The message Spock sent back scratched over Jim like fine sand: a curved line, a child with jet-black eyes and a neatly tied red ribbon, something cold and slimy, and finally a sense of calm that made Jim’s eyelids started to drop. When he woke up, his skin reddened and itchy as if he took a rough sand bath.

 _Just typical_ , Jim thought, and set out to work. _A universal translator will really ease thing up here_

The curve Spock showed him was most likely from Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, a bridge between analogue and digital signals. It meant time to do some old school sleuthing, so Jim combed through the old newspaper archive to find out everything about the school. He came across an obituary of a former caretaker Mr. Ziegler, mentioning that he frequently wrote to the newspaper and lamenting his untimely death. He looked at the letters:

 

> Space travel was just a penny away
> 
> Why waste no much money on NASA rockets? They should hire me and I will show them! If they just move here and listen to me, we will have built the base on the Moon by next year, and they can spare all the money for me!

In subsequent letters Mr. Ziegler kept ranting about but didn’t go to detail about his working on a brilliant invention which would transform the town and humanity. But his last letter, dated three days before his death, was unusually brief

 

> I see it! Everyone is wrong and I see the light the colour.

* * *

“Mr. Ziegler? You mean crooked-eyed Mike? We all think that he had a loose screw when he left here. Pity, he used to be as sharp as a razor, nothing got past him. The letters? Yeah he boasted about some machines all the day then, but I just filtered him out when he was just all talk. Are you sure you wanted to go there? His home is pretty much a trash pile. Alright. Go straight to West Block, turn left at the crossroad, and it’s the first red house you will see.” Mrs Harvest said over the phone.

Crooked-eyed Mike’s house was half-ruined and filled with trash, just as Mrs Harvest said. After looking through piles of old magazines and newspapers, many dirty and damaged shirts, and a stash of VCR tapes, Jim found one of Mike’s notebooks, with the first page dated 3 months before his death. The paper was yellow, damp and had marks from insect bite, and the bold handwriting was nearly indistinguishable. Jim collected it in an airtight storage bag to read it later when he got rid of the smell.

Mike used a lot of symbols, obscure abbreviation and code words in the notebook, but after flipping through random rambling about traffic signs and sandwich prize, he slowly got the gist.

Mike was building a machine for space travel, which he got the idea from a book called Liber Ivonis and talking with a tall black stranger. Just the names themselves sent a chill to Jim. Mike talk about the problems and failure, interceded with optimistic speculation: _“Our ancestors braved the danger to explore the unknown. Think what we can do!”_ , frustrated rants: “w _hy can’t the damn dog stop wailing for a time! I don’t know why the dog will go such a far way to torture me!”,_ and what he would do when the machine succeeded. His handwriting got more shaky and rushed, and on the last page he wrote, _The blue sun the mountain I am never so free My soul soar_

If Mike made it across the other dimension with the machine, a creature could easily do the same thing. Jim searched the house and nearby for the machine, but there was nothing. _He must have kept it at the school,_ Jim thought.

* * *

The night after everyone slept, Jim sneaked away for the school west. The air got damper and heavier like a barrier, but Jim still advanced in the dark.

A laughter resonated through the corridor, so Jim immediately took cover when going forward. More and more laughter joined, becoming lighter and higher in pitch, and morphed into a dog’s excitement bark.

Towards the school basement, Jim’s head exploded. Bile roused up his throat and he felt like being strangled from behind. Struggling, he stumbled forward and then---

The suns were sapphire. Cold damp air thickened into thick threads and tied around him, forcing him up. Something was about to sprout out of him, moving under his skin, trying to bite through it. Jim started to vomit and his throat hurt, as if scratched by a blade. And then---

Everything returned to normal, except for the cold water droplet now on his skin. He opened the door.

Space and time kept escaping to a rift of dimension. The air was so thin that he might as well be at the top of Mount Everest, Jim got his weapon ready and took a seat. It would be a long night for both the monster and him, and the last night for one of them.

After a maple syrup odor appeared, something tightened around Jim’s neck. A red line rose of the air, and Jim struck it. His breath got more difficult, and he knocked his neck against sharp glass pieces. When his vision was turning black, he could breathe again and the red ribbon fell to the ground. Jim crushed it again and again until it turned into a red puddle, and moved to the machine.

Jim broke it down into components, drawing a graph of its structure. The rift would remain, but he could try to strengthen the barrier here. He started a chant taught by Spock.

* * *

A month later and no longer a caretaker, Jim checked into another hostel room, with his turtleneck covering a bandage wet with blood. No one recovered completely from looking at the abyss, but every small victory counted. He asked Spock, “Is the machine what you really want?”

Jim was captivated by a complex and beautiful diagram of lines and symbols, and felt warm for the first time since last month. He smiled, “You must know I’m your hired muscle, not an engineer.”

When he hit the road again, he hummed, “Time to go where no man has gone before…”


End file.
